


Jason & The New Outlaws

by deadrobins97



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman and Robin (Comics)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Detectives, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:41:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26983813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadrobins97/pseuds/deadrobins97
Summary: Jason Todd leaves gotham to try and find himself outside of the birds and bats that look over the city, and maybe he lears that there's more outside the city than what bruce taught him.
Relationships: Alfred Pennyworth & Jason Todd, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Comments: 7
Kudos: 53





	1. Chapter 1: Leaving Town

Leaving Gotham City hadn’t been easy to be honest, Jason had already spent way too much time trying to explain himself to his family (is that what they were now?) what he wanted to do.

He understood Bruce and his mission, but being a poor kid and dying at the hands of the joker had given him a new perspective on justice. Sure, Bruce kept seeing the good in everyone and maybe that’s what drew Jason to him that day in the batmobile, “everyone deserves to be saved jay” he used to say, way too often sometimes. 

Being dead sure gives you a new perspective on things, I guess.

So now he’s on a bus, going out of Gotham, maybe some time away from the city will do him some good, away from Bruce and his impossible mission. Away from all the birds and bats from the city that look above everyone like some sort of powerful beings of final justice.

Or maybe Jason had been reading too many books lately.

He sighs and looks out the window, trying to clear his mind. He doesn’t even know where the bus was going, and he’s not even fully sure that he is not being tracked somehow by at least one or two birds and bats member, but right now he couldn’t really give a shit about it.

Miles and miles of green meet his eye on the outside of his window and he feels somehow nostalgic. After his time with Talia and the league and everything with batman has been fast and bloody leaving him bone tired. He doesn’t know what he wants anymore. Does he want justice? Redemption? While he now feels remorseful for what he did to Tim and the rest of the family he does feel a little justified over how much that clown has taken from him and everyone else in this damned city only to escape Arkham after two months and do it all over again.

And maybe that’s the way he sees it, a man doing something bad only to get called out and then go do it again. Does it really change anything? No, it does not. So, he takes the bolder approach, the one that none of the Gotham birds dare to do. Maybe that’s what he should do.

And now he’s looking too much into it. 

He should sleep.

The seat he’s in is comfortable enough to take a long nap and between nightmares, missions and yelling matches with Bruce he really hasn’t had much time to fully rest and now the bus is almost empty and it's nothing but him and the long road away from Gotham.

So, he sleeps.

It’s probably after a short 4 hours nap that the sun wakes him and he can see he’s finally in a big city for what he can see, tall buildings with blinding windows, pretty cars and plenty of people moving around in high heels and other expensive looking shoes.

The bus stops on the central, a pretty big building with wide shiny windows just like the rest of the city. He then gets out of the place as quickly as he came, he rather not spend too much time in public places, too many people and too many casualties in any case. Once outside the city meets him, people running on the streets with their phones on their hands, kids yelling at their parents and the loud noise of cars and public transport moving around. It’s almost comforting how it reminds him of the place he just left sans the crazy clowns and such.

Shouldn’t be too hard to find a place, he already stole one from under Tim’s favorite safe houses here, and he knows he won’t tell as easy as Dick or Babs to Bruce in any case. It’s not in the fanciest neighborhood but that’s kinda what he wants. Without Bruce’s almost ever seeing eyes he can let go a little bit more than how he does in Gotham so this is the perfect opportunity for that.

Hasn't been much work here: Everything was covered in dust and webs. There’s only one sofa that is - thankfully - covered with a white sheet and once he turned the light on he could tell some of the lightbulbs didn't work.He should start working on that but, seems like the trip tired him a lot more and all he wants to do is maybe get some food and sleep for a solid 12 hours, that bus nap didn’t really do him much good.

Putting down all his stuff in what seems like an empty room with a single mattress on a wooden bed base he sits down, dragging hands down his face and decides before falling asleep going out to buy some food on some bodega nearby.

After a cold shower, he changes his clothes and goes outside, the sun was already setting and the streets were starting to fill with all types of people, working girls, drug dealers and homeless filled almost every hidden nook of his walk until he sees an open bodega along a bright logo with “SEÑOR JOSE SUPERMARKET” on the top of the door. Once inside cold air hits him, the place smells like humidity and some unpleasant smell that always lives within the cracks of every building in a big city. There’s no one in the store but him and the old man behind the counter watching the tv right in the top right corner of his side, it’s the news. 

_“And tonight after much deliberation from the judges, its seems John White, CEO of Newtech is deemed not guilty by the jury here in Chicago for the case of child pornography, child sexual abuse and human trafficking; it was rumored that Mr. white was in liaison with several underground groups of human trafficking and there were also pictures of him alongside several of the children missing from last year, but his lawyer has revoked such images saying that they were fakes and this along with the suicide and car accident of two family members of the children’s families involved in the case seems to have been the end of this, Now next-”_

“Poor kids, really” says the old man, thick black eyebrows and deep brown skin “Men like him can really get away with anything these days”

“Happens often around this place?” Jason asks while setting all his stuff on the counter, trying to keep casual about how he’s already thinking about doing some more research about the man on tv, can’t take the bat outta the kid, apparently.

“Oh yeah Mr. White’s been too many times on the tv already, involved with all sort of nasty stuff really” the man answers as he starts passing all the stuff over the scanner “And this last year just got worse, kids disappearing everywhere around”

“Is that so? Sorry, I’m new to the city” Jason knows that now he’s getting involved; not even a day in the city and trouble seems to find him already.

“Yeah you can tell” he answers with a slight smile on his lips “No, the whole neighborhood is worried, just last week a six-year-old disappeared, his momma hasn’t stopped looking for him, poor woman is drowning in her tears at this point, husband says she’s barely eating lately”

“What about the cops?” he asks, already knowing the answer

“What about them? Those pigs don’t ever do shit. If you ask me, I’d say they’re probably helping these bastards, you know you can never trust a pig to not be dirty” replies the old man handing him the plastic bags with all the stuff he just bought – “anyways, what can you do. Have a good day”

“Yeah, thanks you too” Jason is already out of the door with two plastic bags on each side

After that conversation, he’s aching to hit something. It’s not hard to know what happens to these kids. They’re taking the ones no one talks about, underprivileged ones, from immigrant parents to poor folks that live day to day, these rich fuckers know what they’re doing and nobody cares… maybe the problem isn’t the city, the problem is the entire system, the entire way this country has been built to protect those in power rather than giving protection to those in need.

He needs to breathe, he hadn’t realized he had stopped breathing, there’s small cuts in his hands from his nails and suddenly his vision clears. He needs to find something to beat tonight, needs to get all the aggression out, so he goes home quickly, puts all his groceries in the fridge and gets to put on all his red hood suit.

He took the bat out of his modified chest plate. Sure the red muzzle might stand out, but what he’s doing in this city is not something he wants people to associate with Gotham. Hell, he might even get a new name while he’s here. It’s a new city, with new fresh opportunities! So, as he takes his guns and knives, he gets out by his north window and goes up to the roof in the metal stairway. Once up he takes a breath and looks at the sight, it might not be his hometown, but it sure looks nice from up here. 

It’s not even midnight yet and he hears a scream. Looks like it’s time to get to work already.

By the time he gets home it's almost 4 am, his knuckles are bloody and his face is bruised, but more than that nothing else. He didn’t kill anyone tonight, only found a couple of mean drunks and aggressive muggers, other than that the night was pretty quiet, but he feels more relaxed now after taking all his anger out on some lowlifes like that. He is still restless though even as he swears, he feels his bones creaking, so he decides on some chamomile tea, Alfred would always give him some when he was younger and he had trouble sleeping; the manor always felt too quiet for him to sleep comfortably.

Taking some tea bags out of the fridge he also takes some stuff out for a sandwich and gets on making some late dinner? Early breakfast? Doesn’t matter much now he thinks.

Letting the water boil for his tea he starts on his sandwich and turns on the dusty tv, at least it’s a flat one and not one of those old analogic ones. After sitting down on the couch with his tea and another sandwich he settles on going through the channels until he can find something, he wants to waste his time until the tea and his pain relievers take effect.

_“-After all, this is all to disgrace me and my company to be honest”_

Says the man on the screen, he has dirty blond hair and brown eyes, he is wearing what looks like a very expensive suit with a flannel pattern and some dark brown shoes.

_“Is that so Mr. White? Because many people have found some more than damning proof like-”_

_“manufactured lies of course! Nowadays you can make everything in some basic editing software, I blame photoshop for this”_

He answers laughing loudly without a care in the world and the reporter clearly looks uncomfortable, but she’s trying to keep things professional.

_“what about your association with-”_

_“oh, do not mention that one criminal, Terry Holdings, is nothing but a damn scammer and trash to this city. I’ve already spoken to the mayor about it, I’ve done and given so much to this city, this place that saw me grow into the man I am today and I tell you, these people are hoping for nothing else but my downfall, for what reason do they want that I do not know, but people of Chicago, know this. It takes far more than some edited photos and some pesky lies to tear down a man like me, one who has done nothing but good for the people in this town, one that-”_

There’s the sound of something cracking the screen and pieces of a broken tea cup on the floor. He didn’t even realize he threw the cup; the screen keeps playing the interview and the pretty black lady is still trying to ask more but he cannot hear any more of this piece of shit.

Maybe he didn’t really escape the clowns, maybe he just found some without so much make up.

Waking up wasn’t that much difficult, after years of living on the streets and then being a bat makes you into a light sleeper, but after looking at his phone on the nightstand, it’s about midday, so he slept for at least some eight hours, which is more than the usual so his taking his win right now.

Thankfully there’s a coffee maker in this trash place (surprising since timbo hates all types of coffee except for that Starbucks-too-much-sugar-to-be-coffee coffee that he’s pretty sure its Steph’s fault) and sets on silently drinking his first cup, processing what he’s learned in a day so far in here.

So big bad rich guy that’s probably a pedophile among other nasty stuff, kids disappearing and no working pigs to protect the people, so far so bad but so it always is in cases like these, so with these basic facts he gets searching the web for more info.

A lot of people think that doing research on these things has to be difficult, hacking into secret sites and planting bugs everywhere but sometimes it’s not nearly as complicated as they make it seem on tv, a quick google search with some important keywords will get you far enough if you know where to look.

First he had to look through the official site of Newtech, White seems your basic Musk want to be, rich parents, unfinished education from prestigious enough school to cover it up, bought a small up and coming tech start up and with his family’s money, overworking his employees, paying under minimum wage to some others, your basic shady manufacturing company in Thailand and after 15 years he managed to get the big name he is now. 

His story checks out in other news tech sites, social media and several other info sites, so now he tries to look into the scandal. His name pops up on several news sites, and yeah, his pictures are everywhere, they’re not too graphic (thank god) but they’re damning enough to really question his basic sense of decency.

There are 3 main pictures that are the most uncomfortable ones, one there’s a small black kid, as young as maybe 4, he is not smiling in fact, he looks terrified. His big eyes are looking directly into the camera and it almost looks like there are tears in them, he’s not wearing a shirt just what looks like some swimming trunks and there are two grown men on each side of the little boy one of them is Mr. White the other one is a blond fat man, they are also not wearing shirts and only swimming trunks. The second picture is of an older girl, this one is about 12, she looks pale against the dark sheets she’s sleeping in and she’s wearing a flower dress and there’s White again right next to her on the same bed, he’s smiling into the camera giving two thumbs up. And the last one is an even older boy, tanned skin, about 15 all skinny and in clearly in that awkward teen phase of too big head and too long arms, but his eyes seem haunted, he has a clear bruise on his neck just above the neckline of his blue shirt and he is sitting on the lap of White, who looks like he’s laughing.

And maybe if you didn’t look too closely into these pictures, they would seem like normal family pictures, of an average family going on vacations with some kids that clearly did not wanna get out of their rooms for whatever reason, just like most annoying kids on the planet. Except these three were all found dead in different locations in the city within a year that these pictures were taken. Their parents couldn’t even properly mourn them because their bodies were so burned that they were only identified by their teeth records, and because the CPD kept the bodies for a long time to do the reports only to find it “inconclusive” and close the case within a month after.

Jason tries to hold the vomit he feels coming up, takes a deep breath and keeps going. 

He does not look at the pictures ever again.

There isn’t much information about the case in the CPD database (which he DID hack, thank you Babs) other than the names for the kids, Joshua Kelly age 7, Gemma Higgins age 11, and Kyle Souza age 16. All from families that lived on food coupons, worked minimum wage jobs and rented cheap apartments in the city.

Along with these there’s a list of about 20 other missing kids, al ranged between 5 to 17, all from around Chicago, but one of the detectives is looking into possible connections with missing kids’ cases all across the country, the list comes up to almost 50 names.

Shit.

How did Bruce never found this? I mean sure Gotham has plenty of enough freaks to fight against but this is a pretty big thing, and it’s not being contained only in Chicago, it has possible connections with plenty of big industry names. Hell, several politicians might even be involved, it’s a big fucking thing. 

And the kids, god the kids keep disappearing only to reappear as unidentifiable burnt corpses in dark highways and abandoned places. This is severely fucked up, he needs more info about this, even conspiracy theories are good at this point.

So, he gets researching, blogs and social media posts are always good enough to start with, people don’t really care for what they post on the internet anymore and that has made his life a lot easier, especially right now having no smart ass hackers to help him with the above and beyond research and not powerful friends to intimidate people with. After a couple of hours, he finds something, a personal blog, seems like your normal generic conspiracy blog, aliens working for the government, that the birds don’t exist and crap like that, until he finds the entry for the “White Case” clicking in he finds that whoever wrote this made his job really fucking easy.

The article starts aligning all the news articles by a timeline, starting last year, when Newtech donated over a 12 million dollars to the mayor’s campaign for reelection, Daniel Mora, who while caught for some embezzling funds and having a mistress, has never been found over anything more than your basic shady dumb politician. After that, Newtech aligned themselves with other politicians, state senators and even several members of the house of representatives. The web was quite big, and some months after Mora’s successful reelection Newtech gave another donation of over 20 million dollars to the CPD. Then the kids started to disappear all across the country, some names aligned the ones on the city police database, others didn’t. The kids themselves didn’t have much in common other than coming from underprivileged families, but that was enough because sadly that meant not many people were going to look for them and those who did, would be silenced easily, either by money or intimidation.

Here’s where Terry holdings is involved, he was apparently one of the security team working for White, in fact he was employed for almost ten years until he was fired for apparently “underperforming” and was given barely half his paycheck as final payment. After a couple of months the man goes on several YouTube channels to talk to some local influencers about what he know from working as a security man for White and for the videos posted in the same blog, he didn’t know much other than that kids were involved, he doesn’t give many names more than the local ones like Mora, White and some local representatives and that he was always told to pick some dark packages and to deliver them at a certain street or to another person.

Jason knows now he has to find whoever wrote this, it’s clearly impressive work and after working on finding his IP address, he finds the author is hiding behind a vpn. Smart, if it wasn’t annoying to work around, so he goes for the simple route, he plants a trojan virus on the site that will find his actual IP address once he logs into the site again but for now, he can only wait.


	2. Finding New Allies

He gets on taking out his guns and cleaning what is left over of the place, processing everything he knows so far. He really wants to call Bruce for this, it feels bigger than most of what he usually deals with but, the point of getting out of Gotham was learning to do his own work alone from the impossible standard they set themselves at, so it’s better to stay hidden for a while now.

In the meantime better get out to familiarize himself with his new city. Go to the library and find what he can’t on the internet. He closes the door and gets out.

It turns out the walk to the library is not even that far, after a maybe a fifteen-minute walk and he’s suddenly standing before the big red bricked building. Going in is a lot less scary but no less imposing, there aren’t that many people and that makes him a little more comfortable than he’d like to analyze. He gets to the history section and starts pulling out whatever he can find about the city. Old buildings, famous families, etc.; whatever he can find will help him.

After a couple of hours have passed, he feels eyes on his back. It’s a lady putting some books on shelves, for the cart she’s dragging loaded with books, she probably works here. She’s very pretty, tall with black hair and small eyes, Asian probably Korean. He looks back and she just raises an eyebrow.

“Sorry, couldn’t help but notice” she says leaving the cart behind and coming to his table “Some of the books you’re reading are very old”

“Yeah, well that was sort of the point” he needs the most of the original info to get his bearing around the city, the easiest way to get it is to go to the source

“No, I mean I get it, but the city went through some architectural changes a couple of years after these books were written, if you wanna get a more accurate view of the city as it is, you might wanna get something less old than that, just saying”

“And you would know this because?”

“Well I mean other than the reason I literally work here, it’d be because that’s my masters”

“Well and what if I’m making a research job on the old planes for the city”

“Then I’d say to get some different books because a lot of these are very whitewashed and forgot to write in the gatekeeping of black and other color communities when the construction of the city started”

Well damn, maybe he’s not as prepared for this as he thought he was then. 

“Damn, ok then, I could use a little bit of help I guess”

“Sorry, my mom says I’m always rude to strangers” she says as she sits down next to Jason “Hi, names Jolene”

“Jason and are your parent’s country fans or something?” She laughs loudly enough to turn some heads

“You could say that! And yeah, my name is because of the song, and what about it?”

“Nothing, just curious I suppose” letting a small smile reach his lips “I’m new to town, doing a bit of a historical project and I seem to be a little bit lost”

“Don’t worry, I got you, lemme get you some real books” she said putting her hand on his shoulder to get up.

She comes back with at least 10 books; Jason runs up to help her but she’s already putting them all on the table.

“Pretty damn good workout for a librarian huh” she says with a blinding smile that could light up a room.

She stays to help him with all the info he’s gathered and after a couple more hours the sun starts to go down and it’s time for him to go back to the apartment and get ready to get more info tonight.

“Hey, I just wanna say thank you for the help, I really couldn’t have done this without -”

“Don’t even mention it, how about” she rips a small piece of paper from one of the notebooks on the table “You call me and we go out for some coffee?”

A small “sure” is all that comes out of his lips in that moment, and by the next she’s already gone somewhere else. The paper feels warm in his hands, he pockets it and grabs all the notebooks and papers he got on the table and leaves.

He’s got his job for tonight.

By the time he gets to his place, it’s not dark enough to go out so he tries to review some of the info he’s got from the library. And Jolene was right, the original designs of the city are nothing like the current ones, sure every city goes through changes almost every year, but the redesign they did for the modern base of the city was almost completely and done quietly for what it seems. The city is segregated as most cities are in the US, the suburbs disproportionally white compared to more downtown places where more poor people and minorities live. But it seems like the latest gentrification projects are even pushing more people out and it seems like because of this these people are packing and moving away, to the very edges of the city which is only making their lives a lot harder now with transportation and their low wages job being even farther from their homes. And the company responsible for these places? A subsidiary for Newtech.

So, the guy is not only involved in cases of human trafficking but also in gentrification and pushing poor communities out of the city? Jesus fuck, he’s really gonna kill this guy.

Settling down on his couch he closes his eyes for a minute, and pulls out Jolene’s number from his pants. Should he call her? To what? Go on a date? When is the last time he’s ever been on a date? I mean god, he died a virgin and came back to try and kill his parental figure and everyone around him, that’s probably not date talk.

Sex is a whole different thing; he got the bees and the birds talk from Alfred back when he was like 14 because Bruce was too awkward for it and he liked to think it would’ve been a disaster if it had been B giving him the talk. But he died before he could meet someone or even just to get handsy with anyone really.

Before going further in that, the computer pings and he gets up to check it, it’s the virus he planted on the site, he got the IP address, and to his luck, it’s in the city, a couple of blocks from here.

So, he leaves his stuff along with Jolene’s number and goes to get changed.

Getting out tonight was good for clearing his head, so he heads to the address and it’s a small one floor house, paint seems to be falling off the walls and there’s an almost undone car sitting in the driveway. The lights are all off, so he goes into one backyard window, the virus he put on the computer shows him that the person is still on the site. He unlocks one of the windows and gets into the living room. Silently he crosses over the kitchen into the tiny hallway where he can see some light passing under a closed door. Opening silently, he takes his gun out and points it to the kid on the bed.

“Quiet” he says before the kid can move, and it’s really a kid, big black eyes, rich dark skin, some dreadlocks and a college tee “I really don’t wanna hurt you kid, so let’s keep this between us, I promise I just wanna ask you some questions okay?” he waits until the kid nods from his bed but keeps on the door in case he needs for a fast way out “I’m here to ask about some shit you posted online”

“Hold on, is this about my conspiracy blog? Really? Is it the-”

“It’s not the aliens”

“Oh okay, then what is it about?” he asks, straightening his back

“It’s about the White case” the room seems to fill quickly with tension and the slight curious glance the kid had in his eyes seemed to now completely disappear

“What about it?”

“I’m not working for the guy if that’s what you’re asking, relax”

“Well I think I’m allowed to freak out a little bit, some white guy crashed into my home and had a gun pointing at me”

“Touché, look I’m just a concerned citizen looking to stop this guy”

“I very much doubt some simple ‘concerned citizen’ could stop this guy”

“Okay then, why don’t you tell me exactly why”

After that the boy seems to relax some more, that and the fact that Jason dropped the gun on a table right next to the door of the room. The boy, whose name was David Lexter and was an MIT drop out, he was sure there was an interesting story there.

“Look, no offence, but I don’t really feel like giving my sad background to some guy who just crashed into my house”

“Understandable, all I need to know where you got all this info” Jason mentioned sitting by the desk close to the bed.

“Really? It’s all public info really, they’re just very good at hiding it in plain sight, once you know the exact dates and the names, it gets clearer what they’re doing”

“And what is it that they’re doing?” the earlier silence comes back and maybe even heavier than before

“… Ok you know the warehouses by Apple street? The big red ones that seem to have been abandoned for, like, years now?”

“Not really, but for the sake of the argument, let’s say I do”

“Alright, so, those were old places where people used to go just for the fun of it really, you know junkies looking for a place to get a high, homeless looking for a place to sleep, teenagers meeting up to make out and shit like that right? Except like 5 years ago they were closed with like, lock and key; completely. And then a couple of months later people started seeing men coming in and out of the place. People start talking.

Then kids from around start disappearing, people keep asking the governor but he denies anything, it’s not after some video evidence was leaked that people stopped talking and started moving out. Except now the problem is not just around Apple street, suddenly kids keep disappearing all over the place, cops won’t do shit and the media is silent about it. Why? Because the name of the owner of the warehouses is John Theodore White, who also happens to be the main financer for the city’s reconstruction and the new governor’s campaign”

“And what about the leaked evidence?” Jason asks, David seems to go pale, but answers

“It’s a child pornography video, people say it’s pretty awful. I mean, shit like that always is, but this one had torture scenes and some pretty gore-y stuff. People called it Alice’s Destruction and some say that it you can still find it on the web”

“Jesus fuck, ok but why is it connected to this guy?”

“Because according to the people who watched that shit, said that the video was shot on one of the warehouses on Apple street” even heavier silence dominated the moment “And even if you wanna plant plausible deniability like, oh he didn’t know there were people there or that oh it’s not his problem what sickos do in his building, or whatever, the problem is, there was security in those warehouses, there were cameras and people all over the place, if he didn’t know about the whole thing then why didn’t he say anything? Why let these people record that shit in HIS building? And all of this just happened to pass AFTER the election of the new mayor.”

“Ok but was there an investigation or anything?”

“That's the thing, there wasn’t, supposedly it got taken to the police and everything but it never went as other than a rumor. Even when the video got leaked to the dark web and everything no one was even found guilty or anything and eventually people just, I guess, forgot about it.”

“And the people in the video? What happened to them?”

“No one knows, that’s the thing, dudes say that the faces are clear on the video, two white guys blue eyed blond and another black hair and eyes and the kid too but no one’s found anything, rumors say they were killed too after the video was done”

“But no one can confirm anything?”

“No one, at least none that came forward and anything online saying anything are either some edgys fifteen-year olds getting off on some creepypasta or bots that give nothing else but feed into the noise”

Silence passes after David finishes talking, Jason doesn’t like this, none of this. Not just because there are kids involved, sickos always somehow manage to do that but the fact that no one is doing anything, no one is saying anything, this seems even worse.

“Right, imma need everything you’ve got on this case, you kept it?”

“I mean, yeah I’ve got some videos and files, but it’s mostly been outta my own memory you know? I mean, this is my hometown and these are my neighbors so, really most stuff I got it out of just looking and asking around”

“I get it man, don’t worry, whatever you have is good enough” he said as he gave David a black USB that had a tracking virus on it so that he had access to the kid’s whole computer without him noticing.

After a couple of minutes pass, he gives the USB back.

“Here’s everything I could find on the case, some of it ain’t on the site just cuz I was genuinely terrified of posting it.”

“Don’t worry about it, your name won’t come out of this, I swear”

“I hope so, I have my mom and my sister to care about”

That gives him a second to think about, right. He never liked involving civilians in cases like this, but he needed the info.

“That’s fine kid don’t worry about it” he says as they’re out if the hallway and into the front door “none of your names is coming out of this room”

“It better fucking not”

And then David closes the door, and that’s the end of it. 

He gets on his bike stashed on a hidden bush on the abandoned house down the road and sets on getting back to his place only there is a loud bip on his phone a couple of minutes later. He checks it on a red light and sees his gps virus is moving, the kid must have connected a phone on his lap just after leaving his place. Should he follow? He should follow him, right? You know, make sure his info is good and the kid is clean right? Yeah, he should do that and he does just that. Connects his phone gps to the bike and after a sharp left turn sets on his way to see just what the kid is set on doing at fucking four in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not my favorite chapter but needed to introduce my oc somehow lol


	3. Getting into Trouble Already

It turns out to be some bar, funny enough with a “LEGIONS OF WAR” neon logo on the top of the building with some funny looking Viking hat whose light doesn’t work anymore. He goes in anyways and it looks like your normal nerdy club bar. There are board games stashed in a bookshelf on a wall behind the tables and the place looks like every Viking rpg game he’s ever seen.

Not that he would know that mind you.

But the kid is not here, at least so far, so he gets a table to sit down in and checks his phone. The gps tells him that the kid is here, but he just doesn’t see him, he feels like checking in the bathroom but then is stopped.

Right next to him sits a man that looks as much out of place as Jason himself does, tanned skin and rich brown eyes and khaki pants looks back at him, raises an eyebrow and comes closer to Jason’s table

“You here for the game?” well isn’t that fucking suspicious

“Yeah, I am actually, know the way?” he asks, because he’s played this game before. This place is only a front and it’s a good one mind you, if it wasn’t so empty and open at four thirty in the fucking morning, he might have fallen for it.

“Sure, follow me” the man gets up and starts going into the back of the kitchen to face a big metal door, he pushes a red button and then opens it. 

There are some concrete stairs and right there he hopes this isn’t his Parasite moment because that would only piss him the fuck off, but the man doesn’t talk and starts going down the stairs so he follows.

It leads to a wide long corridor and after a while he can hear people, excited screaming and some yelling. After a while he can see it, a small ring with a wired fence and people screaming around it, an illegal pit fighting place right under a Viking board game restaurant, smart thinking.

He can see that in the ring there are two people, a blond man and a black-haired woman. The man is only wearing some jeans, no shirt and has blood pouring down his forehead while the woman looks like she’s wearing some yoga pants and a black sabbath t shirt. She’s smiling as she keeps on hitting the man to the ground, the crowd is going absolutely wild on this and to be honest it looks pretty damn wild from where he is.

The man keeps walking behind the crowd around the ring and he follows him to a room with lockers and some plastic chairs. Then he pulls some papers out of one of the lockers and hands him a paper with the number four on it.

“After this fight is done there’s another one then it’s your turn, alright?” oh shit, he didn’t think it was gonna go like this really, but if he gets some stress out of this it might just do him some good. The man goes after Jason gives him a brief ‘yeah’ as an answer and then gets out to see where the damn kid is. Once out the fight still going, the blond man looks bruised as hell and he tries to get up, the brunette lady still going, there’s blood in her mouth but that doesn’t seem to stop her, suddenly she lifts him up, turns him upside down and then lets him fall into his head, then the guy falls like a sack of potatoes unto the floor of the ring and the lady staggers into the wire around it but she raises her bloody fists and then the referee calls her name.

“Y LA GANADORA DEFINITIVA, LA VERDADERA GUERRERA DE LA NOCHE, ANGELITA!”

That’s quite a name for a woman that huge who looks like she went a couple of rounds already, but who is he to judge anyways. After a couple of minutes, he spots the kid, he’s talking with some guys in suits on the other corner side of the ring, in a hidden corner with a bright yellow backpack.

He opens it and pulls what seems like a box but before pulling them out completely out of the backpack he is minutes, stopped by one of the guys in suit, the one with long black hair, he points at somewhere behind him and then they go. Jason quietly and quickly follows them until they go through a wooden door, he puts his ear on the door to listen.

“Everything is here I swear” it’s the kids voice, he’s scared, Jason can tell even from outside the door.

“Are you sure about that? Because this doesn’t look like what we agreed to” says one man, its deep, like too many cigarettes deep.

“I promise! I just did some updates, some of your designs were a little out of date so I just did some slight changes so they’re easier to carry around, that’s all”

“But did we ask for the updates?” says another voice, higher but still pretty deep.

“Well no sir, but I just thought-” the kids clearly losing it and getting even more scared, this isn’t gonna end up well for him.

“No, you didn’t think! Because if you had you wouldn’t have done what we DIDN’T ask for” the first voice answers, they’re getting angrier by the second.

Its not after he hears a shot Jason breaks the door out and shoots him in the knees, he wants answers, to both what this kid is doing and to what the fuck is going on right now.

“What the FUCK man? Did you follow me?” the kid has the audacity to get mad at him after he just saved his life.

“You’re really gonna get mad after I just saved your fucking LIFE?” really the situation was getting a little bit outta control at this point.

“That’s not what I was fucking saying man, but you just fucking lost me a deal” the men on the floor were still consious and bleeding, so Jason went over there and knocked them out with a well-placed kick.

“Yeah you wanna run that by me again? Because last time we spoke you were nothing else but a crazy conspiracy kid with a blog that didn’t want anything to come back to his place, so how is dealing with these guys not fucking that up huh?” Jason really wanted an explanation to what the fuck was going on. The kid took a look at the men on the floor then went squatting on the floor careful not to let his converse touch the blood.

“Look it's not what it looks like” Jason made a face to show that he really wasn’t buying his bullshit “It’s just…. I needed the money okay, and these dudes are gonna get guns somewhere else anyways, so” David gets up and stands against a desk close by the wall “I figured it be me to get the money outta the deal”

“You really need money that bad?” Jason hadn’t gotten the whole sob story outta the kid back at the house, he was cagey already and he really didn’t think he was gonna see him again, least of all selling guns “can I ask what for?”

“It’s not for drugs or anything like that” 

“Didn’t say it was?”

“I don’t know man you look the crazy white guy type” and what is that supposed to mean Jason did not want to know “But it's for my family, we’re drowning in debt right now and I really wanna get my family out of that house, the place is falling apart already and… yeah” he took a breathe and jumped on the desk “Also, it’s not like they're too hard to make them really”

“Make them? I'm sorry what?” hold on this is taking a twist he did not expect “What do you mean by making them?”

“Well, they’re not that hard to make is what I'm sayin’, MIT drop out remember? And it wasn’t for the grades really” the room got quiet for a minute and then the kid looks at Jason straight in the eyes “Dad got cancer a couple of years ago and between helping in the house and school I missed too many classes and teachers weren’t exactly nice to the broke scholarship kid, so I dropped out, and well, I guess I saw a market for this” he looks back at the men on the floor, who are surprisingly still unconscious “And yeah honestly, it's lowkey kinda fun not gonna lie ”

“And does your dad know about this?” and Jason sometimes just doesn’t know how to read the room

“He’s dead ” a silent ‘oh shit sorry’ escaped the other “Yeah, last year he passed and the hospital didn’t even wait until his body was on the ground to start charging, and since his job insurance didn’t cover it, it was both full hospital and college debt unto us, so yeah I didn’t really mind getting my hands dirty if it meant my family was living okay”

“Alright, yeah I can understand that” Jason put a hand on the kids shoulder and let out a sigh “Help me tie these dudes up and we can-” Suddenly the door was thrown back and the man with the khaki pants from earlier was there.

“What the FUCK are you- you know what? Nevermind it doesn’t matter, let’s go you’re next” the man grabs Jason before he can even say anything and starts dragging him out of the room. This is not working out the way he planned it, but DID he plan it really?

“What’s going on? Wait, you're going into the pit?” David says catching up to him “Are you serious?”

“Does it look like it was my idea?” David says something sounding like an ‘I don’t know’ under his breath “Right okay, can you just wait until i'm done with this, im sure its not-” and then he’s in

front of the pit door, and the one on the other side is the woman from earlier, there's sweat on her face and on her black shirt but even that is not as scary as the wide smile she sends on his way.

Fuck.

David just stares at Jason with a hidden smile, like trying to hold it but not being very successful on this, the khaki man pushes Jason into the ring and closes the door.

For a while both the woman and Jason stare at each other, not saying anything; in the distance the announcer is saying something but he’s not paying attention, until the woman in front of him gives out her hand.

“Dont worry too much, it’s the last fight so at first blood it's over” she replies while shaking his hand, her voice is deep, like whiskey and honey deep, her eyes up close have small shading of light brown in the deep black in them and her smile stopped being so aggressive to a more amused one

“It’s not me im worried about” Jason says only doubting a little bit, because well, fuck he was trained by the bat and the league of assasins, and while the lady was fucking huge, he wasn’t exactly small himself, if he’s learned one thing so far, is that most people in these things do more punching than thinking and thats usually why the bat-lot tends to win, (even tim with his skinny ass) is thinking before punching. The woman only raised one eyebrow and sent him an even more amused smile

“Alright, whatever you say pretty face” and then she moved back into a fighting pose and so did Jason. And just right there the fighting started.

The fight didn’t start right away, unlike what he thought was gonna happen, she didn’t even try to come closer, instead she was watching him like a prey, but he didn’t back down, and he refused to be the one to hit first, that never ended well. After what seemed like minutes but was probably seconds, she stopped and looked at him, silently until she went full forward trying to hit him in the stomach. He moved to the side just right before her punch landed, damn she’s pretty fucking fast, he almost didn’t see that one coming, the lady is still standing and looking right at him, her smile is predatory again.

“Didn’t expect you to be that fast kid, not gonna lie” she continued trying to corner him to a side, faster than her, Jason sent a kick close to her face, it didn't land, but it gave him enough space to move out. While getting out of that corner, the woman threw a side hit and that one landed, heavy, fuck, thats gotta bruise.

Jason quickly delivered a punch to her face and this one also landed, busting her lip. She just smiled wider.

“Been a while since anyones landed a hit on me, nice one” she mentioned as she delivered a back kick to his face, knocking him back into the wire.

“Don’t think it's gonna be the last one” he replied as he delivered another right hook under her face

“I think you just made my night kid!” why was she so excited about this, god only knows but now she went right on charging at Jason like a bull looking at red.

As he picked a fighting stance again, she went low and grabbed him by the legs, loading him unto her shoulders, but as she was gonna drop him, he locked his legs around her and let her fall first. Jason himself was surprised with that move he just pulled out of his ass; maybe all those nights watching WWE with Damian after patrol were finally paying off. 

He got up fast as so did the woman and punches we’re fast to fall between them both. Every single one hurt, Jason blocking a high kick while delivering a punch, the woman giving a head butt while he tried to kick her legs out, hell he even got his nuts kicked while keeping her in a headlock.

The final punch was delivered as he used his elbow to hit her right in the nose, it made a loud ugly noise and blood started pouring out of it.

“FIRST BLOOD! DO YOU WANNA FINISH HERE OR DO YOU WANNA CONTINUE?” asked the announcer, he was a short man with a big nose. And Jason hadn’t noticed until now that the crowd was silent, almost deadly. Some people in suits, others in polos and shirts that looked too expensive to be from around here, they all stared at Jason with absolute hatred in their eyes, but when he looked at the woman, she just looked amused again, still while there was blood pouring down her nose. She just huffed and shook his head at the announcer. 

“LA BATALLA A TERMINADO SEÑORAS Y SEÑORES! EL GANADOR ES EL NIÑO DORADO!” well thats a fucking awful name, but it thankfully he’s never coming back and hopefully never telling Dick about any of this, just then the woman extends her hand to him, not caring about the blood on her lips.

“You fight good kid, never had anyone here that landed a single one on me” she smiles and it would almost look cute if still the blood and the bruises on her face didn’t make it quite a sight “Name’s Layla ”

“Jay,” 

“Just Jay?”

“Yeah”

“Alright, ‘Just Jay’ might wanna show me some of those moves one of these days huh” just then the announcer raises both their hands as the crowd screams, some boos some others are either too drunk or too high to care. 

Anyways, they both get out of the ring and right there the other kid is still waiting, David is just staring still with that smile that is starting to get on Jason’s nerves.

“Hey Layla what’s up?” David says while rising up his hand for a high five “Looks like you got into some bit of trouble up there”

“Ah, nothing I couldn’t handle Daves, besides” she says as she puts her back on the wire fence, now that the crowd is thinning out “What makes you think I didn’t plan it?”

“Hold on, you did?” oh now he has the biggest smile on his faces it takes almost all of it

“Now wait a minute, you two know each other?” Jason asks as he sits down on the stairs for the ring.

“Yeah, well kinda, yeah” David stammers trying to be a little bit less obvious about it, Layla does not do this.

“We actually do, yeah, lord knows I’ve saved his ass more times than I can count, by the way how’s your mom? still thinking you making all this cash at the bodega down ya house?” she pulls a water bottle out of nowhere and starts drinking

“Mr Donner owes me one, so yes, when my mom calls, he answers, he’s pretty cool and doesn’t ask too many questions” well damn this kid really has the whole thing covered, might wanna keep him around for now.

He could also use some new guns though.

Looking at the kid and the lady, Jason gets an idea, now really, people usually paint him as the “violent bat” but while that’s the common gotamite idea, he was a robin, he took all the robin classes and all the robin tests and passed all of them, so fuck yeah he’s also smart. 

Taking in all the case he’s working in right now, he realizes he’s gonna need some extra hands, and right here in front of him were two crazy motherfuckers that might just be perfect for this (with a little incentive from one of Bruce’s many, many offshore accounts). He could really use the extra hands on this.

“Hey you two, are you looking for any new job opportunities?” How bad could this go, really?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more ocs!!!!! sorry if this one is late, ive just had a writers block, its terrible


	4. Surprises

With light pouring down his room, Jason did not wanna wake up; he got back from that nerd bar around six in the morning and was not looking forward to getting off his bed. It was really tempting to just stay in bed all day and sleep the bruises and stress all off, and he was about to do just that until he heard a noise coming from the kitchen.

Slowly he got up the bed and grabbed the gun under his pillow, and started heading towards the living room/kitchen where he saw a bald head and shot.

“What the fuck is wrong with ya, wanker?” came a british voice from the bald head in his kitchen “fuckin’ hell bruv, I’m just making coffee”

“Prudence Wood” Jason really needed to get better security if Tim’s weird ass friends were gonna be coming into this place.

“The one and only luv!” she got up from squatting on the floor and then looked at the man “If I knew I was gonna be getting shot in the morning I would’ve brought my get-shot-at shirt”

“Has anyone ever told you to shut up?” Jason answers, leaving the gun on the ugly white couch in the living room.

“Not ones that live for long, no” She starts drinking her coffee from a pink cup that looks like a pig's face “So, wanna tell me how you ended in one of the red bird’s places?”

“Not particularly, really” He replies, moving into the small kitchen and serving his own coffee on a mug that says ‘I’m a Gamer, what’s your superpower?’ “But I could ask you the same question baldie”

“Well, it's not a long story i’ll tell you that” she sighs as she puts her coffee on the breakfast bar “I’m running from the League bruv, so I’m using the little birdies places to crash in between travels”

“Does he know about this?” He probably should’ve asked Tim before he left the manor, but how was he supposed to know his crazy bald ex-bodyguard was still walking around these places? still walking at all?

“Don’t know don’t care really, but I figured after saving his skinny arse he owned me this much” now she falls into the couch somehow without dropping a single coffee drop. Jason finishes his coffee and starts on some toast “So, what’s all this about?” she asks, looking at all the papers while putting the gun on the small table in front of the ugly couch.

“None of your concern lady” Jason replies with a mouthful of burnt toast.

“Oh, come on luv, I’m a curious girl you can tell me” she looks at him and only raises a single eyebrow, why are all the women in his life slightly terrifying?

“It’s just some case I’m working on, again, none of your business” he says as he finishes his toast and starts washing his mug, Prudence like the absolute nasty person she is, just leaves it on the breakfast bar.

“I could help you know?” she is now sittin on the breakfast bar, looking eye to eye.

“And why would you do that?” Jason’s now with his back to the small kitchenette, trying to raise a single eyebrow and failing.

“I don’t know, maybe because I’m bored?”

“Are you? you know I’m pretty sure you could just get a job”

“So could you, and yet here you are living in someone else's place and probably stealing someone else's money” she says now, getting down from the bar.

“First of all, miss Wood, I’m the older brother, so I’m legally allowed to take his shit at any moment I need, and second, it’s not stealing if it’s my inheritance”

“Oh so going after big bat dad’s money, I’m getting intrigued here” he’s never gonna get rid of her now is he? “Oh c’mon big guy, I really could help, you know, give you a new perspective or shite like that”

So he tells her, the names and the whole case, while maybe the atmosphere started as something light this morning it quickly turned into a solid sense of righteous anger and a need to get out on the streets right now.

“So boss, when are we getting these fuckers done?” if it only were that easy

“I’ve got someone working on the intel right now but we can’t just crash in and shoot everyone on sight”

“And why not?”

“Because this isn’t something you can just shoot at and problem solved, we’re talking about a whole web of politicians, corruption in high places and child abuse; you kill one of these fuckers and the rest of them go hide” the morning has come and gone and now the day is starting to settle well into the evening “And yeah, we can still find them, but we wanna get them right now and on the spotlight, where it’s gonna hurt them the worst” they’re both right now sitting next to each other on the ugly white couch “teach these fuckers to be afraid of ever doing anything like this ever again” 

Silence passes for a moment between the two of them, then Pru gets up to the kitchen to get her dirty cup and drink some cold coffee, like an absolute freak.

“Alright if you insist, i’m in” she didn’t even put milk or sugar on the coffee, it’s gotta taste nasty by this point.

“I don’t remember insisting”

“Didn’t have to, I’m that good at reading people” then she finishes her black cold coffee.

In that moment Jason’s phone rings, he gets up back to his room leaving Pru behind on the living room, she turns the tv on as he closes the door to his room; he looks at his screen and its David.

“What’s up daves?” he answers as he drops into the bed, hearing the loud ass tv from the other room talk about what ‘season colors’ are best.

“Yeah, you said to call if we found anything right?” he’s talking too fast into the phone and he sounds out of breath.

“Uh, yeah I did, you got something already?” damn the kid’s quick on his shit, he quickly stands on the edge of the bed, David sounds like he’s in pain “kid are you okay?”

“Yeah, just chronic pains, look, I found some shit online you might wanna see” david replied as he sounded like he got his breathing back “im sending the files after this call but all you gotta know right now is that they’re apparently having big meeting next week”

“Who is, daves?” Jason asked as he got up, looks like they were finally starting somewhere.

“Some guys around my street were talking about moving up with some guy named Doug, apparently they’re moving some ‘merchandise’ he wasn’t clear wherever it was drugs or something else” Jason could hear the keyboard clicking through the phone.

“Alright but what does this have to do with the white case?”

“Because I just found this Doug guy facebook, and it turns out his dad works for one of the warehouses, in fact apparently the dad is the head security of the place, he is still employed to the company and even has a nice picture with the man himself on his page”

People will literally post anything on the internet, this is just making his job easier by the day.

“Alright kid, get me all the info you can on both of these dudes, the time and place for the delivery and anything else you can find on the whole thing, alright?”

“You got it boss” he quickly hung up and sat back on the bed, he really was tempted to just go back to sleep until David came back with all the necessary info, but he remembered he had a guest in his living room so he got up and unto the door.

“You still here baldie” she was indeed still in his living room, had apparently made herself a sandwich and was now watching some spanish telenovela on his tv.

“Damn fucking right, so what’s the plan birdie?” she asks with her mouth full of sandwich and loud spanish on the screen.

“I guess you’re in then, we got a job” he went to the kitchen and had to make himself a sandwich because there was barely anything on the fridge anymore and hers looked good “got my intel already working on it so, the moment he sends the full info we get ready”

“Guns blanzing and all that shite eh?” she said holding his gun and pointing it at the tv

“Put that down and yeah we’ll see when we get to it” he said before taking a bite of his sandwich.

“You know, I heard some stuff of you back in the days with my roadtrip with the other bird” she looks at him from the ugly white couch “You used to be a lot meaner back then huh”

“Coming back from the dead will do that to anyone” he really did not want to talk about this.

“Not to mention apparently the pit too eh?” she raised a single eyebrow again, god its was annoying.

“Did Tim just vented all our secrets to you guys?” he really had to talk to the kid about keeping some shit in between them.

“Just some stuff, and well you did try to kill him once, I think it’s justified to vent out just a little bit”

“Whatever” he was not gonna have this conversation with tim’s weird assassin friend.

“Look, all I’m asking is what happened? I mean you came back to Gotham, gun blazing, cutting heads off and all that to show to the big bad bat that what he was doing just wasn't enough right?” he did not answer, his plate was in the sink and again and he did not like where this was going “and now? you’ve got rubber bullets and tasers, don’t get me wrong they still do the job but it’s not really the same isn’t it?”

The tv was still on, someone was yelling about a long lost brother and Jason still did not want to answer, but eventually he did.

“It was just easier”

“What do you mean ‘it was easier’ like-”

“I mean having to constantly fight an entire family of vigilantes that claim to love you but don’t listen to you its fucking exhausting you know? like, I’m not fucking stupid I know killing it’s bad but the shit i’ve seen? Bruce and the rest of them like to think they know best but they dont they fucking don’t” his anger was getting the best of him, but he grabbed unto the bar and continued “none of them know what its like to be on the other side of the case, none of them fucking know” Even with the tv on, silence felt heavy on the small appartment “Years ago, back when I used to live with my folks there was this one kid, his name was Jae, some small six year old lived across our place. He used to play a lot outside his door because his parents were always screaming and at nights you could hear the piece of shit sperm donor beat the crap outta both the kid and the mom. So one day, the mom decides to get an order right? a restraining order on his ass, except the judge tell her there’s not enough evidence on the case so she get dissmissed. So this continues for a couple of months until one day the bat comes” at this Jasons pulls out a bottle of water out of the fridge

“Beats the fuck out of the man and takes him away and you would think thats how it ends right? but it fucking doesn’t because that motherfucker did only three months with the orange suit and then came right back to kill both the wife and kid” his hand is trembling, his knuckles are white “tell me how the fuck you wanna call that justice? how you go outside every day in a fucking furry suit and call yourself a hero when all you leave is unfinished pieces all over the city and hope their corrupt asses do something right?”

“Jason I-”

“But god I’m tired, I’m fucking exhausted at trying to explain myself to a billionarie that’s never had to live with this shit face first on a daily basis, with some brats that had parents that loved them and protected them from all the ugly shit in that cursed city when I got first seat into the fucking worst” he takes a deep breath and streches his hands for some seconds “so yeah I took the rubber bullets and the tasers and playing it safe because I’m tired of the talks, the disappointing stares, the calls, the fights, everything”

“Is that why you came here?” for the first time since she’s been here, her eyes look serious.

“I don’t know why I came here, not really, I just wanted out” he sighs and looks up to the roof of the kitchen, it’s dirty as hell “Guess I wanted to see something”

“What exactly?”

“I don’t know yet” he looks down at his hands, color is coming back to them “But this ain’t gotham and there’s no fucking way I’m letting kids get hurt on my fucking watch, least of all to sick fuckers like this. Not when I can do something”

Pru gives him a big smile his way but says nothing, was it what she wanted to hear Jason doesn’t know, but he finishes his water bottle and takes another deep breath and tries to rethink the whole info he’s got so far.

  1. White is a disgusting piece of shit involved in child sexual abuse, human trafficking in general, probably some drugs and clearly even in corruption. Not so different from the usual rich sick fuck sadly.
  2. His subsidiaries are involved in keeping the families involved in the case out of the city, why? to keep them quiet probably.
  3. How deep are the guys' hands involved in? the videos, the houses, the pictures everything points to the guy having a big deep web involved in all types of shady shit, so Jason has to start from the bottom up in order to get through the whole thing.



Now the question is, if he nabs the guy, says he actually gets to the man himself along with the names and all the proof he needs to send his ass into hell and back, how is Jason gonna get that done? This isn’t Gotham, he doesn't have the help of a millionaire involved in the entire city's work and life to serve him whenever he needs the punishment to fit the crime how the laws sees fit. 

This is a new city with corrupt officials so far of rich people ass they’re obvious about it, and its people are so used to it they know better than to ask questions about it. Here, there is no Dark Knight, there's only people trying to get by everyday.

Jason guesses he’ll get to that when the moment comes, in the meantime he needs a plan. First of all it's David, the kid was very clear on the fact that he does not fight but that he is very damn good at tracking and making weaponry so Jason can work with that. Then there’s the other woman, Layla, mean, big and a hell of a bitch; military trained apparently, didn’t as too many questions and in all honesty, he did not want to ask more; he’s never been too good at making conversations with strangers and to be perfectly honest this isn’t a team up, this a job, that's it. He already tried that back with Kory, Roy, Artemis and Biz and it just ended up being a collosal fuck up, the best thing right now its get the job done and move unto the next place.

The tv is still on and Pru hasn’t said a word so far, after getting all that info Jason plops down on the other side of the couch.

“So red, what are gonna do now?” she asks putting one arm on the pillow on the back of the couch looking straight at him.

“I’m thinking we could get some more names for whoever is involved in it and how deep it goes” Jason replies not looking anywhere else but the screen, which now has a different show on it, something about a hundred mexican questions.

“What about the John White guy? where is he?”

“Disappeared a couple of days ago after his famous interview and hearing, no one can find him apparently”

“Alright then, how are we playing this?” she keeps looking and he keeps trying to avoid looking back, until he sighs and looks straight at her.

“I was thinking going to an underground bar, a couple of blocks from here, from what I’ve gathered its a pretty nice shit hole for drug and gun dealers, I say we head down there and see what they got, might bring a friend”

“Alright, he's cute?” Pru finally looks back into the screen, which is now showing some kinda game show with bright colors on the background, they’re talking loud spanish.

“Who?” 

“Your friend dumbass”

“Well, I mean she’s not ugly, I guess”

“Oh she’s NOT ugly, I see how it is”

“We’re really not having this conversation right now”

“You’re the boss”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry if its shorter than usual, had another idea ill post later but i love jason too much to not update something about him lol also finally getting to pru, don't know much about her other than the red robin comics dont bully me too hard if she's a little ooc


	5. First Meetings

A couple of hours pass and they’re finally on their way to the bar, the place looks like an abandoned apartment building but the inside light color show gives it away, that and the two big guys in black suits on the main door. Both Jason and Pru get in without issue, Layla says she was gonna meet them there.

Jason himself is wearing a simple pants and black shirt convo with a denim jacket over all, hidden inside its his red muzzle, two pair of guns and a small knife, Pru herself is wearing jeans and a tank top that leaves little to the imagination, she also has hidden knives on her boots and pants.

The place is packed and loud, the DJ can be seen in the very front of the stage with their entire kit already set up, a couple of half naked dancers around them and the bar already full of half drunk people asking for more alcohol.

The pair of vigilantes come in looking around, spotting drug dealers in these places is a lot easier than people imagine. It always comes down to the ones on the hidden corners, they're always looking around waiting for their next buyer.

And right at the right corner from the center stage there's a guy, tall and lean, rich brown skin and long black hair, full lips and big black eyes. Jason could almost call him beautiful but this isn't the time for distractions like that. Quickly he sends a side eye to Pru and she simply nods, apparently they found the guy for the night. They take to the main dance floor trying to not call much attention to themselves, if they do the whole thing will blow over, so slowly and quietly they start going into that corner.

The man himself has not moved, he’s smoking a cigarette and the light of the club hits him right on the face, making him seem almost ethereal or maybe it's the long nights finally getting to Jason.

Pru is starting to look at him weird but says nothing, they only keep dancing, then finally just before they reach the other man she raises an eyebrow, almost asking how they're gonna play this one out, he lays a hand on her arm and then drags her close to him finally making their way to the man.

He’s alone and quickly spots them, they don't say anything, but drug dealers barely do, especially in public, fast he starts walking towards a more secluded corner and finally drags out his cigarette.

“Sorry, had to get out of there, too much noise is making my ears hurt” Jason can hear a slight accent in his deep voice but nothing too noticeable, the only thing that is too noticeable is how his eyes seem brighter up close “so what are you looking for huh? got some fine dust, pills and weed, your call”

“Yeah we’re looking for something a little bit more interesting, if you have it” Pru answers before he can even come up with something, she’s a fast thinker.

“Sure can do babe, follow me” then he starts going down a hallway next to the bathrooms until they reach a door. As he opens it both Jason and Pru have already weapons on their hands.

“Look we’re not looking for trouble” and even before Jason can finish the sentence the man quickly turns around and hits him right in the nose.

Clearly they were mistaken in thinking the man wasn’t gonna do shit.

Pru quickly tries to put him on a headlock but the man is fast on his feet, kicking her legs away getting free of the lock, Jason goes back into sending a high kick but the man manages to get out of the way and sending a punch into Jason stomach, Pru is getting back up and trying to draw the man down on the floor with her, but he sends another hard kick to her nose making a loud crunch sound clearly breaking it.

The mysterious drug dealer is apparently more than that because he just managed to beat the crap outta both of them and decides to make a run for it almost getting away until a tall figure stands in front of him and with a single punch manages to know him out.

“So guess you guys started without me huh?” says Layla looking at the man on the floor in the middle of the hallway.

“Sorry, couldn't wait too long, drag him in here and close the door” Jason replies and then waits as Layla puts the man in a fireman's carry and then sits him down on the only chair in the room. After tying him up with some rope the bigger woman was carrying around for some reason neither of the other two wanted to know, they wait until the man wakes up.

“We really didn’t want to do this the ugly way, man” Jason says as he notices the other man’s breathing pattern change.

“Well, fuck I’m sorry if I dont exactly take it easy when two people have guns behind my back” he answers looking straight at Jason while blood slipping from his forehead, Jason thinks it makes him look beautiful “What do you want? the drugs? is that it? because if it is I can’t give-”

“We’re not asking about the drugs, we just wanna ask if you know some names”

“And why the fuck would I answer that?”

“Because-”

“You’re a fucking narc or something?”

“Will you let me fucking finish?”

While he expected the two women to snicker around this they both stay quiet and serious, maybe because they know whats at stake, maybe theyre actually fucking good at their jobs. Jason huffs and looks back down at the other man.

“Look, we’re just gonna ask some questions and you’re gonna answer or else we’re gonna a real bad fucking time”

“And again, why the fuck would I wanna answer anything to you?”

“I could easily fuck you up myself, but” Jason lays on the side of the wall looking right at the other man “don’t feel like it, might just let my friends over here do the job for me” Layla looks intimidading and Pru doesnt look too nice either “So yeah, just a couple of questions and we leave, no one has to know anything” Silence passes over the room until the man sighs and looks back up.

“Fine, but whatever shit you have going on better not come back to me” he says while looking at everyone in the room.

“Relax, Mc dreamy we know how to keep quiet, now” the other man gets off the wall and closer to man in the chair “so what do you know about Terry Holdings?”

“Holdings? the man from the youtube interviews?”

“That's the one”

“To be honest, all I know is that he delivered some packages to some of the main distributors around this area, but I don’t know what was in there”

“You’re telling me you never really looked into that?”

“Look, it’s not like I’m stupid, I know this people are fucked up and involved in some heavy shit, but I’m making the cash I need and as long as I stay on my lane with my head down and quiet I can pretend and besides, it’s none of my buisness”

“Children being kidnapped and abused is none of your business?”

“Look, I don’t like it either, if it were up to me these fuckers would go to hell for all I care, but what exactly can I do? call the fucking cops? they’re involved in that shit”

“What do you mean?” Pru is asking now, she’s not moving from the wall but her eyes are sharper than before.

“Some detective is working with the heavy duty guys along with a lot of fucking cops from the station. That’s all I know, I swear”

“What about names?” Layla asked from where her back is on the door.

“Fuck, the detective’s last name was Correjo I think, that’s all I know of them”

“You got a meeting place or something?” Jason keeps looking right down on the man, his hair looks soft under the soft yellow light of the room.

“Are you fucking serious?”

“Pretty much, yeah”

“I better not get fucked over for this” at the lack of answer of the other three in the room, the man from the chair finally answers “They move the meeting place every week, from what I’ve heard it's gonna be down the railways on 24th street this friday after ten, thats all I know, I promise, alright?” after a couple of minutes, Jason sighs and finally answers. 

“Alright, thank you for your cooperations, We appreciate it”

“Fuck you, man”

“You wish, now ladies, I say we get moving, we’ve got what we came for” Pru is the first one to move and Layla opens the door, the hallway is still empty.

“You’re not gonna untie me?”

“Think of it as a payback for breaking my partner's nose” Jason replies and before the man can answer, he closes the door.

The hallway is still empty and the loud boom from the music covers up any noise that the man from the room is making. That leaves the three of them to leave the place quietly and luckily without any more problems.

“Mc dreamy?” Layla asks once they’re outside the club “we’re making Greys Anatomy references to drug dealers now?”

“What? no, I was just, you know, being funny” Jason answers as they're getting closer to the place where they parked their bikes and Layla’s what-is-supposed-to-be-a-car car.

“So you do watch Grey’s Anatomy?”

“No I don’t”

“Yes he does it’s on his recently watched on netflix” Pru answers, Jason feels betrayal in that very moment

“I’m never letting you near my netflix account ever again, see if you can finish watching Boys over Flowers now” 

“No boss! don’t torture me like this” Pru answers overdramaticly putting the back of her hand on her forehead then pulls two cotton balls from the bag on her bike to put on her bleeding nose.

“Alright, so what are we doing with this now?” Layla asks seriously looking straight at Jason while Pru sits back on her bike

“I’m calling Daves, see what he has and try and find exactly where this is taking place, get there and beat the fuck outta some creeps”

“Sounds like a solid plan to me” Pru answers, with two cotton balls on her nose

“I don’t mind getting my hands dirty if it goes down like that and besides, I’m sure I could use the extra work out” Layla answers opening the door on her car and getting in “call me when Daves got all that and I’m there”

“Will do” he taps the top of her car before she closes the door and drives away

“So Mc dreamy huh?” Pru has the smuggest smile on her face and her cotton balls are now dripping with blood.

“Shut up” they both get on their bikes and drive away.

He gets up in the middle of the night, a nightmare woke him up, it was the green but this time, there was also blood, everywhere he could see, it was the sharp contrast of colors and he felt like drowning, choking on the liquid.

He sits up on the bed and takes a breath trying to calm his still shaken heart and starts trying to breathe in and out until his hands stop shaking. He feels like an absolute mess and tries to get rid of the last remains of the nightmare and his mind suddenly goes back to the man in the club, he could admit that he found the other man attractive but didn't want to think much too further than that really. What was even the point of considering it? Even with his questioning sexuality it wasn't the moment, and he was the last person to really talk about relationships, so it was better to keep it to himself, after all the people that have left him, it was better.

He gets up to open the door and gets to the kitchen to get some water, once out of his room he sees Pru on the couch, all spread out sleeping, she’s clearly having a much easier time than him, he quietly takes a bottle of water and looks through his phone, he has one message from David from hours ago.

_David: call me asap_

He looks that the hour on the corner of his phone, it says it’s four am, might not be such a good hour to call, but then again, he met the younger man at an underground fighting club at three in the morning, so maybe not such a bad idea. He gets out of his place and lays back on the door, hits his contact number and puts it on his ear, it rings for a while before actually answering.

“Yellow?” answers the younger man, Jason can hear background noise like laser shooting, looks like the kid is playing a videogame or something

“Hey daves, you asked me to call you?” there’s no one in the hallway and the light is kinda making his eyes hurt after getting out of his dark apartment

“Oh yeah” he hears some keyboard smashing and a muted scream “yeah, right” more laser sounds “You couldn’t call at another time when I’m not playing LOL”

“It’s four in the mourning” Jason thinks that’s judging by the boy’s habits it’s a perfectly reasonable hour to be calling

“Perfect hour to be playing LOL”

“Of course it is” he presses his fingers on his nose and takes a deep breath “Listen, I don’t care what you do with your free time, but YOU send the text so then-”

“Oh yeah yeah right, lemme put this on hold” a couple more key smashing sounds and some background muted screams “right okay, I’m sending you some stuff that I found also, Layla called me earlier told me about what you found with the Mc Dreamy guy”

“We don’t call him that”

“You did”

“We’re not talking about that either”

“Whatever you say Meredith” Jason sighs, he’s really regretting this team up.

“Just tell me what you’ve got” his lack of sleep is finally catching up on him, his eyes feel tired and the bright ass light is not helping him at all.

“You’re the boss, okay, so first thing I’m sending you is the detective Francisco Correjo’s file and lemme tell you, this dude’s definetly mixed in with some nasty shit, 48 year old white male, born and raised in the city, but has had several complains and other stuff over sexual harassment and shooting unarmed civilians, but has yet to be even suspended once”

“Of fucking course”

“Pigs, what can I tell you?, anyways yeah and listen to this, this man was apparently also pretty close with the Holding guy, they have several pictures together, but it gets even worse” Jason can hear him clicking away “Apparently our dear detective is pretty tight with White himself”

“Oh you gotta be fucking kidding me”

“I wish I was, but White mentioned him by name in an interview a couple of years ago, he called him ‘An absolute force of good and justice’ back when he was called out for killing an autistic kid in his home, then mentioned that he worked close with him for his security system, trusting ‘their blue hearts’ or some bullshit like that”

“That’s how he met Terry Holdings”

“Probably, to be fair Holding didn’t know much and was clearly trying to get to the big man himself, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the detective’s gun that killed him”

“Wait, so Holding’s is dead?”

“Oh yeah, I was about to get there, yeah, I just got the morgue report today, the cops are calling it suicide, I’m calling it murder”

“Of fucking course it’s murder” Jason is just getting more and more pissed “What time did he die?”

“Yesterday somewhere between eight and ten in the morning”

“So it wasn’t the club guy”

“Don’t worry your favorite doctor’s clean”

“I’m gonna fucking kill you” David just laughs, he’s really not the boss here.

“Sure thing man, anyways yeah, Terry’s dead so there goes our next witness to question, we might need to get more aggressive on this”

Jason didn’t actually think about questioning Holdings, truth to be told, he had long abandoned the idea of going to any form of authority for this, the more he finds, the harder it’s starting to get hard to see a way out of it.

“I’m hearing you, what else you’ve got?”

“Okay so, I checked what your man said last night ”

“Not my man”

“-And it goes along with all the info I got when I asked around, their meetings are always on different places around town, but from what I heard from some locals is that yeah their next delivery is this friday on the abandoned apartment building by the railways on 24th, at approximately at ten thirty, that's all I could find”

Jason takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, then looks around the hallway, it’s still empty then goes back to his phone.

“Alright Daves, I think that's enough to get some of these fuckers, thanks, I’ll keep you in the loop for anything else”

“And I’ll text you if I get any more info, boss”

“Alright” Jason ends the call and sits down on the floor with his back to the door, he’s still tired and his eyes just keep getting heavier, but he’s too worked up now to sleep, he decides to get back inside and at least try and get some sleep. He opens the door and finds Pru already up on the couch playing something on her phone.

“Couldn’t sleep?” she asks, putting the phone down, there’s a sliver of light coming in through the window now, it must be closer to dawn now.

“Got a text from David, talked some more info about the case” Jason does not feel like having a conversation about his nightmares with Pru, not for any specific reason he just doesn’t want to talk about it, he’d rather forget about it, even if he knows the nightmares always come back.

“He got the place?” she sits up on the couch looking directly at him, he suddenly wants to just lay down.

“Ah, yeah, we got the place and time, should probably get ready tomorrow to hit this place on friday”

“Alrighty then, you going back to sleep? not to be rude but you look like shit”

“It’s still dark you can’t even see me”

“I have super eyes”

“That’s a fucking lie”

“You a scientist? no? then shut up and accept you look like shit” He decides to leave it at that, he can hear her laying back down on the couch and closes his door. 

He looks at his unmade bed, sighs and then lays down and looks up to the ceiling, his thoughts go back to his family, he thinks that term is a bit of a reach, Dick and him never really got together even if now at least they’re on talking terms, Damian comes to his place every once in a while, especially after getting into a fight with the Big Bat Dad, they settle down on watching WWE or whatever other hyperfixation the kid haves that day, last time he saw him it was Doctor Who apparently, they don’t talk much but Dami’s a good kid even if a bit of a little shit, but then again kid’s like what? twelve? all kids that age tend to be little shits.

Tim’s the only kid he kinda gets along with funny enough; couple of years ago he tried to kill him and now they meet at least once a month to talk shit about the job and most specifically to talk shit about Bruce, it has done wonders to their relationship to talk like real brothers, he even sometimes talks about how he’s doing with Steph, last he heard he wanted to go to college and take her with him. 

Babs and him talk even less than with Dick, she still remembers the kid he used to be before his death and he can see it every time they meet up for whatever reason, she looks at him like he’s lost, there’s a sadness in her eyes that he doesn’t like to see. 

Cass is a badass and her favorite sibling, she is everyone's favorite to be honest.

Last time they talked they were eating a hot dog after a drug bust and sitting on the top of the Commerce Bank building, close to the Gotham Lake, they had bruises all over but were laughing with their mouths full and just enjoying the night.

“You’re one crazy bat, Cass” he had to swallow the hot dog before continuing “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a guy lose so many teeth that fast”

“Slow and dumb” she said, she was smiling with tears on her eyes, the moon was somehow shinning throught all the gotham pollution and it reflected in the lake. It was a beautiful night.

“Oh yeah they were dumb as hell” he finished his hot dog and got up “Alright Cass gotta go, that River’s case ain’t gonna solve itself” but as he’s about to leave a hand stops him.

“Brother” her black eyes shine the brightest against the night sky, she’s looking at him with such love he almost feels intimidated “Okay?”

She’s asking about the fight he got with Bruce a couple of days ago, they had stopped some pimp that was selling his girl’s for organ harvesting, some of them as young as fourteen and once they landed he just went off on the guy, Dick had to stop him before he killed the guy but the only thing he could see was a the little girl’s body they found on the warehouse last night, her white eyes haunted him and all he could feel as he was beating the man over and over again was how cold she was when he closed her eyes before leaving.

Dick didn’t say anything as Bruce was just yelling at him, about how irresponsible he was and how they delivered justice not punishment and all that shit, his hands were still dripping with the other man’s blood.

He felt no guilt for what he did and Bruce knew it.

Jason hopped on his bike as Bruce kept on screaming, all Dick did was stare and Jason couldn’t stand to be in the room anymore and just left them.

He looks back at her “I’m peachy Cass, don’t worry about it” he left Gotham the night after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another oc!! lol sorry for the late update, this last part of the year has been hell and my computers been acting up lol

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if there are some grammatical mistakes, english isn't my first lenguage, also this is my first fanfic ever, if there's anything I can make better lemme know in the comments and i wanna thank @angryjayb1rrd and @wlwonderwoman for being my editors and beta readers and encouraging me to post this <3


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